Chez Macoule

First! My first first! It’s a first! Woohoo!!!
I wish I could be just as upbeat about Chez Macoule, but the juju’s all wrong.
Chez Macoule is located in a fairly tough part of Flatbush. This helps to explain a couple things about the restaurant, such as the large plastic window — like one you’d find at a pawn shop — separating the restaurant from the cashier, a convenient way to pass through take-​out orders, and the non-​descript, implacable, heavy wooden door from which the waitress bursts forth from time to time, setting down cafeteria-​like trays on tables with pitchers of water before furtively retreating back into the restaurant’s nether regions.
A friend of mine and I came for lunch on Saturday a couple weeks back. When we sat down to order we were given a laminated plastic menu that had several options, including different daily specials. However, when we tried to order some these items we were informed that the only thing they were serving was soup. Ok, so we ordered two soups (didn’t feel like we had a choice about what meat was going to be in the soup), fine.
What came out was a thick soup made with beef stock that contained pieces of beef and root vegetables, including plantains, yuca, carrot and potato. The food actually tasted okay; the stock was thick, hearty and had a good amount of spice in it, and there was a good amount of food in the bowl. The major problem we had was that the beef, which was on the bone, had not been cut well, and when we tried to eat it we were greeted with dozens of tiny fragments of bone shard, which made eating the soup somewhat unpleasant.
The other thing that was off-​putting about Chez Macoule was the prices. I figured as long as I was trekking all the way out to almost the end of the 3 train’s line, I would at least get a deal on the food I ordered. I don’t remember exactly, but I think the soup cost around $ 10 and the entrees we wanted to order cost even more. Maybe my expectations were completely unfounded, but that’s a little expensive for this part of town (it’s pretty ghetto); I can get cheaper and better food in midtown Manhattan and a friend has already served up a list of good Haitian restaurants.
I’ll try anything once, but not necessarily twice. You keep trucking, Chez Macoule — now go do that voodoo that you do so well!!!